Analytical approach to the typology of problems of teaching foreign language to agrarian university students

The global changes in recent years in geopolitics and socio-cultural context have had a significant impact in terms of revising the status of foreign languages in modern Russian society as well as reconsidering the value of being proficient in them in the applied aspect. The growing public interest in Oriental languages (Chinese, Korean and others) and Oriental cultures transmitted through them, as well as linguodidactics specialists' expert opinions on the potential decline of the role of English as a language of international communication in education, science and business, have made practising teachers view the current situation with anxiety. However, the challenges of reality are unlikely to change Russia's foreign language landscape overnight beyond recognition. The emergence of multiple variations of the English language studied and practised in different regions of the world (new Englishes), along with a wide range of teaching courses that prove to be in demand (GE, ESP, BE, EAP, EMI), and, finally, the evolution of methods and techniques of foreign language training (multilingual teaching) in fact open new professional horizons and create new challenges for the Russian scientific and pedagogical community. Teaching and practical application of English as a foreign language in Russia have always been realised in tandem. These processes have always been characterised by all sorts of problems that regularly originate, with the efforts to resolve them; among them, the problem of foreign language education quality, both at the level of secondary and higher education, stands out. The manifestations of this problem in the form of the inability of a significant number of non-linguistic-profile graduates of Russian universities to address communication tasks in the studied foreign language (primarily English) in the context of professional activity have been noted by researchers for a long period - from the 2000s to the present time. This problem, called the “pragmatic gap”, was clearly manifested in the example of one of the non-linguistic regional specialised universities, namely Kuban State Agrarian University, and was reflected in the 2021-2030 development programme implemented under the auspices of the federal strategic academic leadership programme “Priority 2030”. The low linguistic level of the university staff, including a significant share of the university's own graduates, recognised as one of the main internal challenges and constraints to the implementation of the given programme, actualised the need for a comprehensive analytical study. The study aimed to identify the factors reducing the efficiency of students' foreign (English) language training and to form a typology of these factors. Two categories of learners were selected as the respondents: former students (currently -professionals) and present-day students (future professionals) who are currently studying English within the framework of two educational tracks: corporate training and Master degree programmes. A special methodological framework was formed for the survey, which included such discrete methods of data collection and analysis as comparative/con-trastive study of Russian and EU statutory legal sources, questioning, testing, goal-setting, observation and interviewing as well as statistical and content analysis, interpretation, generalisation and classification. During the research, within the period from 2022 to 2024, a number of stop factors, or constraints, were identified, that drew increasing attention in the process of teaching a foreign (English) language to students of a non-linguistic regional specialised higher education institution (Kuban State Agrarian University) and resulted in a decreased effectiveness of such training. These factors include systemic/organisational, didactic/method-ological and psychological/pedagogical constraints. It was also revealed that each of the above types of stop factors had multiple manifestations. It wasconcluded that the totality of these factors creates prerequisites for the formation of a pragmatic gap in the system of Russian foreign language education. In turn, this indicates that the problem of low language-training quality specific of graduates of Kuban State Agrarian University as one of the non-linguistic regional specialised universities cannot be reduced to a single cause and thus needs a comprehensive solution as a consequence. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References